The present invention relates to television program distribution systems and apparatus, and more particularly to the provision of different commercial messages to different demographically targeted cable or satellite television audiences.
Viewers of commercial television are well aware that a typical television channel contains television programs with periodic commercial message breaks. Advertisers sponsor television programs by purchasing space for their commercials during the broadcast of the program. Although different commercials are often run for the same television program in different geographic areas, there have been no practical systems implemented to target specific commercials to specific television viewers on a case-by-case basis.
One prior art system proposed for targeting different messages to particular subscribers is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,602,279 entitled "Method for Providing Targeted Profile Interactive CATV Displays." The disclosed system requires the transmission of a common television message and a plurality of different multichannel television messages over a plurality of contemporaneous channels. Since a plurality of television channels is required to carry the different messages, the proposed system does not make efficient use of the limited television frequency spectrum. For this reason, it is believed that the proposed system has not proven to be economically viable.
It would be advantageous to provide a bandwidth efficient method and apparatus for targeting specific commercial advertisements to demographically selected audiences. Such a system would enable commercial advertisements to be matched to specific television viewers, thereby more efficiently utilizing advertising budgets.
It would be further advantageous to provide such a system wherein a single television channel allocation carries a main television program chosen for viewing together with a variety of alternate commercial messages to be selectively retrieved during a commercial break depending on a current viewer's characteristics, such as the viewer's demographic profile.
The present invention provides such a method and apparatus.